adventures in breadmaking

PRIMERO: WAITING FOR THE YEAST TO RISE

I'm really nervous, but excited. I went to my grandma's house today to learn how to bake bread, and while it's still fresh in my mind, I'm attempting a small batch for the first time tonight. My grandma's bread is famous in my family, and probably among her circle of family and friends. It's buttery and the texture is perfect, and since all the Bruss' seem to be toast addicts, nothing beats simple toast with butter with my grandma's bread.

So here, I am, surfing epicurious.com for info on bread baking, coffee mug full of yeast, sugar and warm water at my side. This post will have to end when the yeast mixture reaches the top of the cup, because it'll be go time. We'll see what my first attempt at kneading, waiting and baking yields. I'm ready for a letdown, because as my grandma said, you'll learn from your mistakes. A bread recipe looks simple, with less than 10 ingredients, all of them found in most kitchens. I learned today, however, that it's not that simple, and there are many tricks and pieces of bread-baking wisdom to be gleaned from someone with a lot more experience than me.

I tell you all what, yeast rising is really cool. There's only a half an inch until it reaches the top of the cup and I wish I had a digital camera so I could have taken a photo five minutes ago, when the yeast, water and sugar pooled at the bottom of the cup, and another in about one minute. Then I could post them here so you could see it for yourself.

Well, I've lost the race against time in attempting to say something meaningful in this 7 minutes, so you'll just have to wait until the dough is rising.

SEGUNDO: RISEN

So, the first time around, the dough rose. The kneading went well, although it seemed too easy. I wonder if I had put too much flour in. Jury's still out on that. I've put my little babies in their pans now and they're sitting in front of the radiator, hopefully rising again, and then, there's just the baking.